Why are there no PowerLine Smart Plugs?
By @edent
· IoT Smart Home · 20 comments · 200 words · read ~1,874 times.
Another blog post which is a long and complex search query.
I have a bunch of smart plugs. Some use WiFi, some use Zigbee, some use Bluetooth. None of them use PowerLine Ethernet. Why is that?
I have a bunch of PowerLine Ethernet adapters. They let me use my home's electrical wiring as a network. They also let me plug electrical items into them. But none of them can be controlled remotely. Why is that?
I want to take one of these: 
And mix it up with one of these: 
That way I'd be able to monitor the power consumption of a device and remotely operate it. It wouldn't need WiFi, it would have a permanent and reliable connection to my LAN.
I've searched AliExpress and I can't find what I'm looking for. If you think this exists - or if you make it - please let me know!
@blog Hey I'm also a PowerLine user. Do you have any tips for measuring the speed of the PowerLine connection please?
Brian Williams says:
The Tp-link utility displays the speeds between nodes, if that's any help.
@Edent I agree, this feels like something that should exist but I've never seen one. We use PowerLine at home and get a steady, low latency connection at 600Mbps (our house was mostly rewired in 2015) and it would be great to take advantage of it more.
@Edent As a fellow powerline enthusiast, this nerdy post was deeply appreciated.
@Edent probably because power line networking chipsets are not as mass market, and I'm not aware of anything like the esp32-wroom with power line networking yet. WiFi chipsets are everywhere.
ambrosen says:
Yep I'm another Powerline fan, and it's frustrating it's not more integrated into more things.
My personal wishlist would be for a USB-C power adapter that also provided an ethernet connection, so you could just plug a laptop in anywhere in the house no matter how congested or flaky the WiFi was there.
Mr Snazz says:
Have you looked into X10? There’s plenty of X10 outlets, but I don’t know of any that monitor power consumption.
Jeremiah Stover says:
I worked on a very similar project a few years back - did not find a suitable commercial option - and decided my requirements did not justify the complexities of a custom build or the bulk of merging two commercial products into one box. reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-line_communication I looked at TI's solution (I think it was the BOOSTXL-AFE031-DF1) (~$60). Then chose to use a product from ali-express KQ-130F (~$8) I only needed a single outlet to turn on and off, local or remote (one way communication) - however it appears to also be possible to extend to multiple outlets and to return power usage data (2-way).
@blog Probably the same reason that there are no smart outdoor security lights (unless you mean a video camera).
Andreas says:
Several problems:
1) Powerline is power hungry. A Devolo adapter for example eats 5-10W. Multiply this by the number of smart plugs or switches you use and you might end up with a sizable electrical bill. This would also mandate relatively large chassis.
2) There are at least two competing, and incompatible, PL standards: HomePlug AV and G.hn. And in theory there would a another standard specifically for IoT/home automation-devices. Which one would you expect to be implemented?
Andreas says:
That said, existing Powerline adapters could offer more flexibility using USB-C. Rather than offering 2 or 3 Ethernet ports, an USB-C could provide Ethernet connectivity as well and provide power to a notebook via USB power delivery.
Sam says:
Seems like what HomePlug Green PHY is meant for.
If you made one I'd buy it.
Hacker News said on :
Why are there no PowerLine Smart Plugs?
Brian Williams says:
This is going to sound simplistic and naive, but - why not just plug one into the other?
@edent says:
A smart plug requires WiFi to work. My WiFi network doesn't reach that far. My homeplug ethernet network does reach that far. I do not have a way to connect a WiFi plug to an ethernet cable.
I think timing. The HomePlug people released "HomePlug Green PHY" standard in 2010 which was a lower power lower bandwidth variant for "Smart Energy and Smart Grid applications". Fits the bill exactly!
However this came not long before the first wave of affordable wireless technologies that fill the same niche and the subsequent explosion of interest in "Smart Home" IoT.
I think even HomePlug kind of teamed up with ZigBee in the end: https://sunspec.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Zigbee-SEP-2-docs-11-0167-18-seed-app-spec-draft-for-editors-review.pdf
Whereas I think the HomePlug AV gear still solves a pre-existing more common problem (getting high-ish bandwidth networking across a gap that's infeasible for Wi-Fi.)
HomePlug Green PHY did find widespread adoption in one other niche, though: the CCS2 charging standard for DC fast charge of electric vehicles!
I want one with PoE injectors so I can use an external AP easily and neatly.
Has the homeplug standard been updated recently. I don’t believe I’ve seen any new devices on the market for some time now. Happy to be corrected.
@Edent Few years ago, I was looking for a PoE clock radio, so it could have NTP and streaming audio. Never found one.
@Edent I looked into this just a bit a few years ago; basically there seems to be a constellation of smallish problematic factors which has (so far) precluded commercial efforts into bringing something like this forward. (High power requirements, competing standards, TI sitting on IP, significantly cheaper radio alternatives...)
I did find at the time that there was a hobbyist who had produced small runs of kits using the TI parts. I will poke around Tindie to see whether that person still fits the bill and report back.
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